Elizabeth Oldfield speaks to journalist and best–selling author Sathnam Sanghera 28/09/2022
Elizabeth
Hello, and welcome to The Sacred. My name is Elizabeth Oldfield, and this is a podcast about the people behind the positions in our public conversations. I’m interested in the deep values that drive the people that I talk to, the unconscious ethics or instincts we’re all often living by, but rarely have space to talk about. So easy, I hope this isn’t just me. I find it too easy to see people different from me in their job, or their politics, or their race, or their gender or their religion. I make all kinds of assumptions about where they’re coming from and how they see the world. I do this, maybe I’m the only one, I would guess not. And I really want to learn not to do that. I want to have more curiosity and more empathy in these increasingly divided times. So, every episode, I speak to someone who has some kind of public voice or platform, from different backgrounds and positions on all manner of the different spectrums that we manage to disagree and fight about on; I try and understand their story. Get a sense of where they’ve come from, the principles that they’re trying to live by and what they’ve learned about dealing with disagreement in more life–giving ways. During the interview, I try… I do sometimes fail with a very long question, but I try and just shut up and listen to centre the guest to attend deeply to them. But I needed somewhere to put all my thoughts that I am reliably having as they speak. And so, at the end of the interview, you can hear some reflections from me on what they’ve said and what I’ve learned, so please do stay tuned for that.
In this series, you can explore episodes from Bake Off judge and novelist Prue Leith, documentary producer Rowan Deacon, journalist Sathnam Sanghera, barrister turned farmer Sarah Langford, writers Paul Kingsnorth and Dante Stewart, artist Jonathan Pageau, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Great Britain Zara Mohamed, and editor of Vice UK Zing Tseng. You can also go and explore our back catalogue. And the thing we often do, I think, with podcasts is we scan down the list and we think, Oh! I like them: I will listen to them, or oh! They sound like they’re just like me, I’ll listen to them. I would encourage you to both do that, because everyone needs just to listen to something lovely and fun, every now and then, but also to maybe have a listen to people who are different from you, or who are from groups or positions or points on the various spectrums/spectra… that are different from you. Because I hope what you’ll hear will enrich you, will help you build empathy, and maybe give you a little sense of the world widening as well. As is traditional, I need to now ask you if you would be willing to rate the podcast, to leave us a little review even, or to share it with someone and hit subscribe if you haven’t yet subscribed, and then you’ll get all the new episodes directly into your podcast app. I want to say a big thank you actually, for the most recent reviews which have warmed my heart. Tiny Little Fish is the name, JDH Cave, Elizabeth, Claire and Bradley, whoever you are, I know nothing about you, but your encouragement that what we’re making as a team is nuanced and thoughtful and soulful and changing the way you think about people in the world is just manna for me. Sometimes it can be a bit lonely honestly, just speaking into a microphone alone in my room. So, I love it when you talk back at me, and you can do that also on Twitter and Instagram. There are Sacred accounts, I have personal accounts… in this day and age you will be able to find what you need very, very quickly, so please go do that.
Meanwhile, in this episode, you will hear a conversation I had with Sathnam Sanghera. Sathnam is a journalist on The Times, he’s an award–winning memoirist and novelist and his latest book ‘Empireland’ has been garlanded with plaudits. We spoke about his childhood in Wolverhampton, his Sikhism, which he is in the process of reclaiming, I think, and be more prepared to speak about publicly, the abuse and racist vitriol he receives online and what he is learning about colonialism. I really enjoyed listening and I hope you do too.
Elizabeth
Sathnam I’m going to kick off, not with your classic interview question about how your typical day unfolds, which is a lovely gentle way of easing someone into an interview. But with something much more difficult to get hold of and access, and it always feels like, you know, right at the start that your brain is just warming up. And that’s okay… but it’s what is sacred to you? What might your sacred values be? And you can really take that in whatever direction that you like. The thinking behind it is that in public life, when we see people with positions, engaging, often in these sometimes quite divisive or fraught public conversations, we assume everyone’s starting from where we’re starting. And deliberately transgressing our values, the things that we hold sacred, or are just, you know, bad faith actors. My theory is that for most people, we are functioning even semi–consciously, on a set of values that are sacred to us. But they’re often very different from other people’s and if we understand them better, we might build a bit more understanding and empathy. And I just think it’s an interesting question to reflect on. So, having had a small amount of warning, what bubbled up for you as what might be some things that you hold sacred or a sacred value for you?
Sathnam
Yeah, I guess I came up with one mundane thing and one, probably, more profound thing. The mundane thing is I’ve never believed in ‘cool’. I’ve never believed in ‘being cool’ or being part of a gang or going along with what the majority think. I think at school, it was basically a desire not to be part of the gang. And for me, it was about music in that everyone was into indie music in the 90s. Like The Wonder Stuff, and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and I hated that stuff. I was really into pop music and soul music, and I felt no desire to pretend I was into it. So, I remember I had a folder with pictures of Mariah Carey and George Michael on it and it just was deeply uncool. But I remember having like stand–up arguments with my friends about why Mariah Carey was better than The Wonder Stuff, something I’d stand by, by the way, and I think I’ve continued in that vein of saying what I believe and being myself and not necessarily going along with a gang.
Elizabeth
Do you have a sense of where you get that from? Lots of people would envy that strength of character.
Sathnam
It’s not necessarily a good thing, I don’t think. Sometimes I wish I’d gone along with the crowd a bit more and actually, I might have had more fun if I’d gone along to those indie gigs, you know, which everyone else was doing.
Elizabeth
I have heard of your bands, I haven’t heard of those bands. So, history told the tale that you were right.
Sathnam
Yeah, but equally I was probably a bit lonely as a kid. You know, I was always doing my own thing. It comes very obviously, from my mother, who is a very strong minded and incredible character who I sometimes feel like having her as a mother is a bit like having Nelson Mandela as the father, in that she’s so heroic, and she’s been through so much, and she’s so inspiring. And has had to be her own person that she’s kind of taught me to be the same, really.
Elizabeth
You said you had one other thing…
Sathnam
I guess the more serious thing is that… I was going through all the things I’ve done in my life and career, and there’s a definite thread of wanting to compromise. Or rather than being ideologically pure about trying to have conversations with people you disagree with, I’m trying to talk things out. So, I think that’s the case with my journalism, being on The Times. I have to share the newspaper with people I violently disagree with, who I would probably cross the room to avoid. But I still stay there and try to talk it out. I think it’s true in my writing on ‘Empire’. I think it’s true in relation to the campaigning work I’ve done in terms of diversity, and so on. And it’s probably true in relation to my family in that, rather than just go off and do my own thing, I stayed there and had terrible conversations for quite a long time, and brought them along with me, which is a very painful process, but ultimately, rewarding.
Elizabeth
I wonder if there are times in your life where you felt like that was under pressure? Do you remember feeling like actually it would serve me better or I would earn more money, or it’d be more successful, if I actually just pick a side, to be a bit less centrist? Or centrist maybe isn’t the right word, but seeking to understand.
Sathnam
No, I think centrist is a good way of putting it, I do feel like I’m a ‘centrist dad’ without being a dad.
Elizabeth
I didn’t want to insult you.
Sathnam
Yeah, I am a centrist.
Elizabeth
You claim it.
Sathnam
I’m totally a centrist. And it’s such an uncool thing to be at the moment. There’s been loads of times when I wish I wasn’t like that, you know. When it came to my family and telling them I wasn’t gonna marry a Sikh girl and do the arranged marriage thing and stay in Wolverhampton. You know, I went along with that for 10 years, if not longer, it’s only after a very long process of writing my memoir and coming out to them, as it were, that I finally told them what I think. And now it’s like we never had the conversation. You know, it’s like, it’s taken for granted by my nephews and nieces. All this stuff that actually, I had to fight hard to get my family to agree to. I definitely feel it’s easier on Twitter to be ideologically pure. I mean I get trolled a lot by lots of different people, but I get trolled most, by the Corbynistas. And I’m not even a member of the Labour Party. It’s just because a few years ago, I signed a letter, not really thinking about it, saying that Jeremy Corbyn was unfit to be Prime Minister on the grounds of his anti–semitism. I mean, I’ve had death threats and trolling from the Right wing, but it’s nothing compared to the stuff I’ve got from the Left. And it started again when ‘Empireland’ came out, because their view was ‘How dare Sathnam claim to be an anti–racist, claim to have anything to say about ‘Empire’ when he single–handedly stopped Jeremy Corbyn, the most anti–racist politician in British history from becoming Prime Minister?’
Elizabeth
Wow. I’m now thinking what, in my kind of anthropology of The Sacred, Jeremy Corbyn is functioning in the worst possible way as something sacred because it becomes a kind of idol to be protected against.
Sathnam
Jesus Christ! I mean, people do think he’s God–like, and a messianic figure. And they look at me and think I’ve compromised. I work for The Times, I’ve been photographed with people at parties who are Right wing, and you know… I’ve thought out loud on Twitter and thought, ‘Oh, maybe my colleague has a point about this thing I don’t really understand.’ And nowadays, you have to be pure.
Elizabeth
Yeah, we will definitely come back to that, because it is one of my key interests, but I want to wind you back in time to get a sense of your childhood. And you’ve written a lot about this, but maybe not for a while, and particularly the formative ideas that were in the air. Some people’s are political, some people’s are philosophical, some people’s are religious, I’ll let you know narrate that however you like. What were those big ideas for you?
Sathnam
Well, I was a very religious child, you know, I was a Sikh. And I had uncut hair. My mum really found God in a big way, just before she had me and saw me as this kind of gift from God.
Elizabeth
So, your other brothers had cut hair?
Sathnam
Yeah, my dad had cut hair. I mean, I was like, raised as this religious experiment within a not massively religious, extended family. And I was very religious, you know, I really believed in it. And you know, I’d pray every day, we’d go to the temple three or four times a week, we’d spend six hours every Sunday there. On a birthday as a special treat, my mom would wake me up at half three in the morning, because it was my birthday, and take me to the temple, and then I would clean the floors for three, four hours before going to school, and…
Elizabeth
Exactly what you wanted.
Sathnam
Actually, I did want it, I loved it. I felt like it was Oh! You believed in it! And I actually think there’s something beautiful about it now, thinking, you know, there’s something beyond the self. And I remember serving food. I mean, there were white people in the temple quite often. Because Sikh temples are somewhere you can get free food. And I remember from the youngest age, feeding these homeless people, and being told it was a good thing. And I think it was a good thing. Maybe the amount of time wasn’t good, I could have learned a language or a musical instrument in that time. But it was very religious. And thing is, the way in which as you know, religion is imparted to you by elders and your parents, and what the religion actually represents in reality can be two very different things.
Elizabeth
Do you mind just unpacking it a bit for me/ I know you’re not a spokesperson for the Sikh community in any way, but a lot of listeners might not know a Sikh person. They might have done it at RE and they will probably remember the ritual object…
Sathnam
The Five Ks.
Elizabeth
Yeah, the sort of physical manifestation, but for whatever reason, that’s what I retained. And then I’ve run a religion think tank and was like, oh, there’s a whole world of some deep principles and ideas. What were you receiving in terms of key tenants of the faith?
Sathnam
It’s quite a new religion, I think founded in around the 1600s. It was born as kind of an opposition to Islam and the excesses of Hinduism. It’s quite liberated intellectually, I guess. Sorry. I mean to say it’s liberal, I guess, in the sense that it believes that the caste system is evil. It believes, men and women are equal, it recognises other religions. As a Sikh, the word means ‘disciple’. You follow the teachings of the 10 gurus who were 10 human beings, they imparted all their wisdom in a holy book, which is called the 11th Guru, the Guru Granth Sahib. And in theory it’s great. I think in their way that in theory, lots of religions are great, but then they start representing the opposite. Because even though we don’t believe in castes…
Elizabeth
There’s a big focus on equality, right?
Sathnam
Yeah, big focus, on equality, we do actually have a caste system, in the sense that when you go to Wolverhampton, you’ll find temples opposite each other for different castes. Men and women are equal, it’s definitely a patriarchal society, women are treated worse. Yet we recognise other religions, but then again, you know, I grew up believing that if I married out, I would be disowned. And that’s quite a common belief. But it’s complicated. And in terms of all the trolling I’ve had in my life, trolling from the Sikhs has been a thing. I’ve had death threats from certain Sikhs, early on, because my memoir describes, I guess, a kid slightly losing their faith, although my opposition is complicated, but it does depict a kid cutting his hair which is considered a sacrilegious act, and some Sikhs took that very personally and I guess for some Sikhs, I’m a dangerous thing. Although I would say I am still Sikh, but that in itself, could attract a lot of hate.
Elizabeth
How much was the hair cutting about your relationship with the divine, your relationship with your faith, and how much was it about other factors, do you think? As far as you can access at this late stage?
Sathnam
Yeah, I mean, I think at that stage, I had a very Christian education. So, I knew a lot about it, I was studying the Bible really closely. I did RE for GCSE, I thought I was going to do Theology for my degree, actually. And by that stage, 14, I realised that my own religiosity and spirituality had very little to do with the outward marks of the religion – the long hair, the gara, which I would still wear. And actually, it was a personal thing. I think a lot of people get to that point; you’ve got your own relationship with God. And actually, after I had my hair cut, I probably became even more religious. It’s just I didn’t have the outward signs of it. And I just thought a lot of religion, at that time, I felt it was all about the outward signs and not about the within. So that’s how I felt about it.
Elizabeth
I’m always aware when I ask about this kind of thing that it’s almost more private than asking about someone’s sex life. So please, deflect, if you wish. If you’re happy to talk about practices and the meaning that your faith has for you now. I gather that meditation is quite a big thing in Sikh life. Is that something you practice?
Sathnam
I do, but not in the ritualised way I used to do it, when I would wake up and pray for half an hour before school every day. I don’t do that. I mean, I can still recite the beginning of the Guru Granth off by heart, and I sometimes do that. But you’re right, yes. I haven’t really talked about this since my memoir, where I put forward quite a simplified view of what I actually feel about these things. And as I get older, I find myself going back to some of the things I really found reassuring and helpful when I was a kid. And yeah, I am Sikh, but it’s complicated, isn’t it? I mean I have this Kara, which I’m holding in my hand at the moment, made for me.
Elizabeth
It’s beautiful!
Sathnam
Yeah, it’s beautiful, isn’t it? I had one of the lines of Sikh scripture engraved on the inside, very badly, by a Wolverhampton silversmith. Can you read it?
Elizabeth
‘Recognise the human race as one.’
Sathnam
Yeah, that’s a line of the Guru Granth Sahib, but that I think is the, I would say the ultimate philosophy of Sikhism is that people are the same. And I think this is a useful thing to have on my wrist: to remind myself, you know, occasionally when we don’t treat people as human beings, and you forget it. And I think that’s not a bad way of approaching life. And, you know, when I was reading a lot about Christianity, I found so much common ground between Sikhism as I felt it, and Christianity as I felt it when I read the Gospel.
Elizabeth
Yeah. There’s a very funny section in your memoir, where you’re talking about your London media life, and I think it was particularly kind of 90s/ 2000s, Blairite, high point of Islington excesses, which you are very funny about. But you talk about round the tables with those friends when you were in this glamorous journalistic career. Admitting that you might be at all religious was like admitting a tendency to paedophilia. But when you went home to Wolverhampton admitting any doubt, or complexity or ambivalence around faith had the same effect on people. Do you think that’s changed? I can always feel the tension when I asked the question, particularly for those with a public profile. Do you think we’ve got any better or worse about allowing space for people’s deep and private metaphysical wrestling’s or does it still feel as dangerous as admitting to something as awful as that?
Sathnam
I feel like brown people are let off that a bit in the media.
Elizabeth
Haha! I think you’re right.
Sathnam
I think brown people are allowed to be religious. I noticed that with sport stars a lot. Lewis Hamilton will talk about God and Christianity, you know. And you’ll see, you know, black athletes thanking God and they get away with it. Rappers all the time. And yet, when white people do it people are like ‘oh they’re mad aren’t they, they’re mad!’. I don’t know how in the media world it goes. But I know that in my own life, it’s changed. In the sense that my mother who’s very religious, is much more tolerant of ambiguity and doubt, mainly because her grandchildren are now all grown up, and are way more irreligious than I am. I’m very religious compared to them and she tolerates them. And she’s given up on imposing a lot of the random rules that I struggled with, like, not eating meat for some random reason on Tuesday or on Sunday, like she’ll tolerate us not doing that now. And so, I guess, things have loosened up in my own family life.
Elizabeth
I’d love to hear more about the things that I think are probably not directly theological, but I guess quite the moral universe or the emotional universe that comes through so strongly in your book, and I’m thinking, in your memoir, about things like your mom had very strong rituals when you came home. And you said something fascinating about not wanting to stand out because from your kind of childhood, if you were too successful, it would, you know, it would be slightly dangerous, it would feel like that is risking some kind of terrible encounter. Could you unpack some of that to me?
Sathnam
Yeah, you know, when you’re a child of immigrants in, you know, a country that doesn’t practice your religion, it’s very hard to separate what’s religious and what is just your parents’ weirdnesses. And what is superstition? And so, for me, it was all packed into the area of religion, and actually, it was just my parents’ idiosyncrasies or cultural things. So, for example, what you just referreed to was what a lot of cultures called the evil eye. And you’ll see those evil eye kind of ornaments, you know, on the wall, those blue eyes to ward off evil in, you go into an Egyptians house, in Turkey they have them. And that’s quite a common thing around the world – that’s you don’t want to attract anyone’s envy, because then you will attract the evil eye, it’s the whole idea of putting a mark on a beautiful baby’s face, you know, bring a bit of charcoal or something on their face, so it’s imperfect. I don’t know where, have you come across that before?
Elizabeth
Only in your book. I was intrigued.
Sathnam
I find that it’s quite common in Jewish culture, in African cultures… So that is just superstition, I guess. And which I probably meld together with religion, weirdly… but then there’s all the rituals, which were just really intense as a kid. And I still do some of them: like, my mom wouldn’t allow one shoe to sit on another shoe, right? This morning, I packed all my shoes because I’m moving. And I went through them all and put them all next to each other, I just cannot stand one shoe on another because it will maybe bring bad luck. I can’t stand seeing money on the floor, like putting your foot on money. It feels really unrespectful. So, some of those things have stayed with me. But most of them I’ve slowly shed. And it’s always a bit of a shock when you talk to your siblings or your nephews and nieces. And they’ve given up on them years ago, because it’s so inconsistent. I still don’t eat beef. I mean, if you go into the whole question of whether Sikhs should eat beef or not, oh my god, that is such a complicated subject. But let’s just say for cultural reasons, we weren’t allowed to eat beef as kids. And I’ve kept to it. I still have, though I’ve eaten beef once by accident.
Elizabeth
Your metaphor, your description of the one time you ate beef as being like getting punched in the mouth was so vivid. I was like, oh, yes, it is like blood and tongue. I like beef, but maybe I won’t now.
Sathnam
Yeah. I mean, I still don’t eat beef, but turns out my brother does. And I think most of my nephews and nieces, probably one of my nieces do to, and I found that so odd that I still do that, and they don’t. But this is what happens when you’re children of immigrants: you absorb the culture through just one person, my mother, and it’s so irregular, the way you adopt things, and none of it makes much sense. But I think that’s probably a universal thing. You know, if you grew up in a religious household, you assume your parents’ version of the religion is the version, and you’re shocked when it’s not.
Elizabeth
Yeah. As I was reading or listening to you, sometimes, for reasons I now better understand, being finding it quite difficult to talk about your Sikhism in public, I was reminded, and Christians really do this, and I hate that they do it, of our tendency as communities of belonging and tribes, right? To be so excited when someone in public feels like… represent! We want to stick a flag on them and be like, you’re one of us, you’re a Christian, you’re a Sikh, you’re a football fan, you know, you’re a vegetarian, whatever it is. But the pressure on the person in public being seen as that, I think can be enormously difficult. I understand much better now why people are pretty private about those things, because they neither want to disappoint, nor bear the burden of being that person in public.
Sathnam
Yeah, you’re never gonna be the right Sikh for a bunch of different people, right? I actually stopped even saying I was Sikh for a while, but I’ve now reclaimed it. And so yeah, I’m Sikh. And just because it doesn’t fulfil your idea of Sikh, you know… but the problem is, if you’re one of the first, you become a representative, because when my memoir came out, I don’t think there were any other memoirs written by Sikhs at all. And people began reading my book as a representative comment on the community, Sikhs did. So, I got letters from people saying, ‘How dare you say that you did this as a Sikh family? I don’t do this.’ And it’s like, well, it’s not about the Sikh community experience, this is what it was like for me. Every community goes through this. And eventually, there’s so many memoirs, and so many public versions that people realise it’s just a version. Unfortunately, if you’re one of the first you get all the flack.
Elizabeth
Yeah, that sounds hard.
Sathnam
Yeah, but I see other people do it. I see people from like the Hasidic Jewish community writing books, and that’s hard because then they’re representatives. A friend of mine is gay Muslim, he’s written a memoir about it, a beautiful book called ‘Dutiful boy’. Now he’s seen as a representative of being gay and Muslim, and that’s difficult.
Elizabeth
So, you grew up in this very loving – it sounds, home in Wolverhampton, influenced by this complicated and beautiful sounding, Sikh family culture, at least. And then you were the first in your family to move away and particularly to go to Cambridge. What was that experience like emotionally and psychologically of forging that new path for yourself?
Sathnam
Looking back, it was really exciting on one level. I’m so nostalgic for my 20s because it was so much fun. Everything was new. Every day was exciting, a new bit of London, and all of it beyond my expectations. But it was also incredibly stressful, and emotionally difficult. I associate Cambridge with just intense homesickness. And I went there recently and even now when I go, as soon as I arrive in Cambridge, I feel that homesickness is all back, just because I felt like that all the way through it. And my family didn’t make it easy. Even my mother still apologises to me about this because now all her grandchildren have gone to university, and she looks back and thinks about how she cried every time I came home for three years, you know, and how difficult that made it for me, because they made me feel like I was betraying them somehow, and I wasn’t, I was just down the road. But yeah, it was really difficult and then obviously there was the whole thing about dating someone unsuitable and secret life thing which feels like… well it was 20 years ago. It feels like a long time ago, but occasionally I get flashbacks into what it was like, and I basically made my life very compartmentalised. So, you know, when I was at home, I was at home, and when I was working, I was working. And as long as I forget the other world existed, I was alright. But the moment they crossed over in any way, it was so stressful. And I think I’m gonna have therapy in my 30s, which made me realise how much damage it caused me.
Elizabeth
And in your 20s, you had this very, I gather it wasn’t particularly easy to get that directly from Cambridge, you did like 300 job applications, but it did eventually land a job on the FT and then were writing very good, very mainstream journalism for a long time. What was the thread you were following then? Did it feel like a sense of vocation? What was driving you? What were the ideas you were excited about covering in that period?
Sathnam
Yeah. I mean, this is a question that all writers, especially young ones they have to work out what is it they want to do? And I, I think when you’re a news reporter, which is where a lot of writers begin, you have to think about what excites you. Are you excited about breaking a news story getting a scoop? Or is it the fact that you’ve got a joke into the intro, and lots of people have left and find it amusing? And I found that that was what motivated me: so that if I brought a funny quote, or someone mentioned a funny intro to me… I was feeling my way trying to get a sense of where I was. And I was trying to find the thing that I really needed to write about, which was there. But it was so locked away, because of my controlled life, that it didn’t occur to me that I could write about it.
Elizabeth
Yeah.
Sathnam
And it took someone else to basically force me to do it.
Elizabeth
I want to go into that in a second. But first, I want to ask, because you have said somewhere that you’ve voted for all the main political parties, and you’ve said already that you’re not a kind of head banging ideologue.
Sathnam
When I say that, I’ve said on Twitter, I get that thrown back to me: ‘Sathnam has voted conservative.’
Elizabeth
He must be locked away. But…
Sathnam
I am quite, but anyway, let’s not go to that. But yes, I’m a floating voter, basically.
Elizabeth
And that makes sense from what you said, anyway, how much do you think that is a temperamental thing? And how much do you think that is… lots of my friends who are journalists, and I worked at the BBC on programmes like ‘The Moral Maze’ for a while which just involved me being able to put myself in the best version of each argument, like repeatedly, day after day, week after week, which is why I now think that I struggle to know what I think about most political things. And the FT you know, is quite default politically somewhere but likes to wear it very lightly, right? How much do you think that was formative in your feeling of not having a political home?
Sathnam
I think it goes back to the fact that I am fundamentally unclubbable. You know, I don’t like being part… in school I was never part of a gang, I don’t like groups of men. I don’t like being part of a group. I like the idea that I belong to something, the idea of it. So, I like the idea my family exists in Wolverhampton, and I love seeing them for 36 hours. I love the idea I work for The Times, but God I don’t really work there all the time at all. So, I like the idea of belonging to something but it not taking over my whole identity. I like the idea of being independent and free. I think freedom is the thing it’s taken me a lot of time to realise is what I’ve been after. My book, and the TV adaptation, my conclusion is vaguely that, you know, I want to marry someone of my own choosing, actually, what I didn’t realise is I just want to be left alone. You know, I just want to be free. You know, it took me a long time to realise that, and I think that that kind of feeling explains a lot of my life choices.
Elizabeth
But you have made editorial choices that have not made that more likely, as you were saying, I was thinking on the way here that my friends who are writers and journalists and people of colour, in some ways the dream is just to be able to write about the things that they’re interested in, and not have to have their identity or if they’re disabled, you know… I was on the way I was like; I’m going to interview a brown person about colonialism. And I’m just like, am I just perpetuating these ridiculous patterns? But you were in a position where you’re writing about politics and economics and all kinds of things, and then did step away from that job at the FT to write your memoir. Who was the person who told you, you alluded to them so tantalisingly?
Sathnam
It was my then agent, my late agent, Kate Jones, and my editor, Mary Mount, who is still my editor. Basically, I was telling them about my life. I didn’t really tell them all the details, because I hadn’t really faced up to myself, about my dad and stuff and my sister. And they’re like, you got to write this. And thing is, as you say, in the FT and at Oxbridge, everything is about not emphasising yourself. It’s about deleting the self and being intellectual, right? And the FT is totally about that. I think they weren’t comfortable with…they didn’t encourage you to do first person pieces at all. So, it took me a lot of time to unlearn that. And it’s a bit of a surprise that now, almost everything, not everything, but most of my stuff has a memoir, autobiographical element. And I think that’s partly because people keep asking me to do it. But also, I’ve realised it’s a really powerful way of making people read about stuff they wouldn’t normally read about and bring them into it. So, it definitely helped with schizophrenia. I mean, I think people wouldn’t normally pick up a book about schizophrenia, it’s one of the most depressing subjects around, but if you make it autobiographical, and funny, people do, and it’s the same thing with the British Empire. I think I wouldn’t, back five years ago, have picked up a book about the British Empire. I think lots of my readers probably wouldn’t have, but making it a bit personal means you get them, you hook them in, right?
Elizabeth
Yeah, it’s just good communications instincts, isn’t it?
Sathnam
It’s just good communication, isn’t it? I still have quite a lot of self–loathing about doing it. I often file pieces to The Times; my editor will send them back and go: ‘Need some more about your view of yourself in this.’ And you know, actually she’s almost always right.
Elizabeth
Yeah. I was gonna ask this later about how you deal with the racism and division, but maybe I’ll ask it now because I think it’s relevant, which is, how do you steady yourself? I’m sure your kind of religious practice is part of that. But more broadly, how do you kind of keep emotionally healthy enough to be someone in public, who’s continually offering a little bit of yourself as a sacrifice and then often receiving, just like a backwash of bile via the Internet in your face?
Sathnam
It’s a good question. I think I’ve probably got all sorts of coping mechanisms now. And they vary according to the amount of shit and what kind it is. Sometimes it doesn’t get to me at all. If it’s just anonymous racists saying something in response to something I’ve said on radio, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. It’s when it gets quite personal, it’s when I’m not even writing about imperialism, say on The Times I’ve written a jovial column about wind farms, for instance. And there’s a stream of racist hate written about me, you know, then I remember coming across that once on a Monday morning and then I had to report the comments. Their moderator rang me and said, ‘Oh we are sorry, should we ban this person?’ Turned out they’d been banned before. And so I’d got into a whole debate about…
Elizabeth
Is this on The Times’ website?
Sathnam
Yeah, a whole debate about what we should do about repeat offenders. And before I knew it, it was 12 o’clock, like three hours of my morning had gone because of this racist idiot saying something in response to a column about wind farms. And see this is what racism does, it takes up your time. It stops you from competing with your colleagues, or other people on level terms, because you’re battling this endless crap. But sometimes it energises me, sometimes when I get those letters, it means that you’re doing the right thing. I also get loads of letters from people who say, I didn’t agree with you, and I changed my mind. Thank you. I probably don’t post those letters, because it’d be narcissistic.
Elizabeth
Too British.
Sathnam
Yeah exactly, it would be a very un–British thing to do. But it gives you energy, you know, and I prefer writing for The Times for that reason. Because I know I can get a sense of the audience that some of them agree with me, lots of them don’t. And maybe I’m changing people’s minds. And if I was on The Guardian, I would maybe be preaching to the conservatives so, maybe I may be preaching to the converted, and then again, a load of Corbynistas who would hate me for other reasons.
Elizabeth
So, tell me about ‘Empireland’, how much was it triggered by those direct experiences of personal racism? And how much was it an intellectual quest?
Sathnam
I think it was basically going to India and realising I didn’t know anything about the British Empire. And the average man on the street does. And I knew so little, and it’s quite a difficult subject to find accessible books on. And I just started asking people about what I should read. And I started reading, taking notes with no particular mission. And just following my reading, and then I guess it’s one of those things is that if you feel like you don’t know about something, it often turns out that lots of people don’t know about it. And if you’re a writer, you have the gift of being able to bring people with you on your education. Yeah.
Elizabeth
Yeah, I think we forget that when you started writing, it was not really a thing.
Sathnam
It was so not a thing. I remember when I did a reading from it quite early on, at a friend’s literary event and three or four people came up to me afterwards, utterly bemused…what is it? Is it like, you’re doing history now? Is it a memoir? But I mean, it didn’t make no sense.
Elizabeth
Yeah, felt like a very dusty subject.
Sathnam
Yeah. And as a literary form, it didn’t really exist. You know, it’s kind of hard to say it’s like reverse history with memoir element, but it just worked out, I guess, in the end.
Elizabeth
And have I understood this right, that your parents arrived in Wolverhampton around the same time as Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech?
Sathnam
Yeah.
Elizabeth
Did you know that? Is that part of their imagination of their arrival?
Sathnam
Something I found out when I was writing my novel, which is set in the 60s and I just realised that actually my parents came almost exactly the time he was making a speech. Also, I realised that his speech, having read it, was about Sikhs. It was about the Sikh community in Wolverhampton. It was about people like my parents, and people like me, you know, who arrived at school, not being able to speak English. I mean, in the 1970s, I was amazed at the number of local newspaper stories that were about how kids couldn’t speak English when they arrived at school, about how in Wolverhampton there were so many Punjabi kids, that the white kids started speaking Punjabi. That was one of the stories brought about by Enoch Powell. He made the national press, and I was one of those kids, I arrived at school not being able to speak English. We now know, actually, that kids that arrive with no English, speak two languages, do better. And actually, they raise the standards of all the kids around them, it actually is a wonderful thing, right? But there’s still that narrative that actually immigrants who aren’t integrating, who aren’t English are destroying our children’s education. It’s amazing how these myths become deeply entrenched. But yeah, my parents arrived around then, and I mean, I was never taught any of that, because I think my dad can’t read or write. And my mom at the time couldn’t speak English, but she now can, and can understand it, but we didn’t have any time for politics, never talked about it.
Elizabeth
One of your big section titles is ‘We are here because you were there’. And I asked a question about, you know, was personal racism, the trigger for you exploring colonialism? And actually, I think for some listeners, the link between those two things isn’t immediately obvious. Could you unpack the kind of thesis of that section for me?
Sathnam
Yeah, it’s just basically the idea that the reason we’re a very multiracial society, multicultural, is because we had a very multicultural empire. And the British Empire is the biggest empire in human history, the biggest thing Britain ever did, over four or five hundred years. We don’t teach it particularly well or talk about it enough. But that essentially is why we’re in a multiracial society. And you know, we’ve had two major racist crises in my working life with Stephen Lawrence’s murder, followed by the inquiry, the Windrush scandal, followed by the inquiry, both inquiries said we need to teach our kids more about why we’re a multicultural society, we need to teach Empire. And in both cases pretty much ignored. So, this is what happens: we have these crises, we have a report, nothing is done. We just fundamentally can’t face up to the fact that we are brown because we colonised large parts of India and Africa. And we much prefer seeing ourselves as the country that won World War Two, alone, without the help of the Americans, without the help of the empire. The tens of thousands of brown people who died for this country. But yeah, it’s a deep–seated amnesia. Whenever anyone says, or implies that empire was all bad, or good, I kind of bristle. Because my hopefully the bigger message is, look, we need to just understand this history, based on evidence, rather than viewing it through the prism of our feelings, rather than seeing it as a source of pride or shame. Because if you approach it with that, you’re not going to weigh up the evidence in a dispassionate, intellectual way, are you?
Elizabeth
You sound ever so Financial Times.
Sathnam
Yes. Centrist. Exactly. Yeah. And it’s difficult making the argument sometimes with left wing people, who are there saying, you know, yes, you’re right, Sathnam, Empire is racist, and all evil. And actually, my point is, actually, it was really white supremacist for probably about a century, it wasn’t so bad during the early days of East India Company, when white men went to India and you know, married Indian wives and sort of integrated, it went through different phases.
Elizabeth
And even though you know, a third of it is bibliography and references you have, and have been awarded the, you know, the prizes to show how careful it is as history and evidence…But even given that, and the kind of acclaim from unexpected places, you know, the Telegraph… You’re still obviously receiving such a lot of abuse, accusations of disloyalty, ingratitude, you know, straight out racist abuse. Where did those feelings come from? Why is it so hard not to feel a personal stake in this for people who feel they’re British?
Sathnam
I think when you’re talking about Empire, there’s a lot of people in Britain whose families were involved in it, so it’s personal. You know, it was such a massive project over so many centuries. I would say almost majority of families have some connection to it, either as colonisers, or even more painfully, the colonised. So, immediately you’re in a world of pain. And if you’re a brown person like David Olusoga and me pointing out, sometimes bad things happen like genocides and white supremacy: that’s a difficult thing for some white people to hear because I think it means fundamentally, they have to accept that we’re here on equal terms. And if they do that, they’ve got to give up some of their privilege. Basically, you’re challenging the way Britain has always worked, and who has the power, and that is a really unsettling thing for people. So, they fight it, which is why this government has launched a massive culture war on Empire, you know.
Elizabeth
You had a lovely line, which I felt was very humane, you said, ‘I love my country. And I want to believe the best of it.’ And acknowledging, you know, I think it comes up and it relates to all the other conversations about tribalism and division, that our desire to belong, and to feel part of something strong and safe is so deep in us. And so, you know, primary and pre–rational, that it is very difficult to have the emotional stability, to be able to say, you know, I love my family, and it caused trauma, I love my nation, and it was white supremacist. And we’re constantly triggering each other into fight or flight as a nation and creating the conditions whereby it’s incredibly difficult to get to that, you know, just like sit with the pain and let it pass through you and look at the complexity of histories. Do you have hopefulness about what can help us navigate these so painful, tender, angry seams of ideas?
Sathnam
Yeah, I do actually feel quite optimistic, partly because other countries are going through similar things. And they’ve managed to navigate them. So, Germany is a great example. You know, it’s returning some of its own colonial loot, let alone, the amazing ways in which it confronts is World War Two history. France is doing really inspiring stuff, even America is doing quite inspiring stuff and is having conversations about reparations. So, it is possible. Australia is doing some interesting stuff, too. And secondly, I feel optimistic because of young people. And I think young people really care about colonial history. And, you know, I’ve had such a response from young people to this book. And they want to know, they’re the most racially diverse generation in British history. They are getting their education from other places, if they’re not getting it at school, either through books, Instagram, wherever, and I feel you can’t fight that. I think society is becoming liberal, more enlightened, and that even surveys show that as a whole, the British population are keen on this being taught to our kids, I think, 75% of British people told a recent YouGov survey, that it was a good idea to teach kids about colonialism and slavery. You’d never guessed that from reading the newspaper. You know, and so it’s a niche culture war being fought by a certain breed of Right wing, conservative, Telegraph reading white men, with a few brown people thrown in.
Elizabeth
And I want to finish on a question to hopefully leave listeners feeling a bit equipped to be part of the solution, not part of the problem to some of these things. And you have navigated differences and disagreement around class, around race, around religion, and are, as you said, someone who’s committed to trying to listen and to compromise. What are the things that make it easier for us to see each other as fully human across our differences and disagreements and to stay in enough of a relationship that our society can actually sustain itself?
Sathnam
I think the key thing is not to communicate over social media. That is, I think social media is at the heart of all this.
Elizabeth
But we’re both clearly Twitter addicts. It’s how we’ve been communicating by DMs.
Sathnam
I’ve also made a lot of friends.
Elizabeth
Yeah, me too, I do like it.
Sathnam
A lot of friends from Twitter, but just any argument on Twitter escalates immediately and actually, if you talk to someone…I’ve met some of my trolls, and there almost always turns out to be something about them, which you like. I mean, there’s one guy I met, before my last documentary. It wasn’t broadcast, and he’s been my most persistent troll. And not only did I like him, when I read some of his books, which weren’t to do with history. I really, really liked them. And now I just mute him on social media, so we don’t have arguments and I see him getting angry in the same way.
Elizabeth
He’s still trolls you even after you met him?
Sathnam
Not me, but he gets angry with other people, but because we’ve met, we don’t do it to each other. It was just that one meeting that changed things. And I think as much as possible, we need to look people in the eye and have come have conversations, rather than doing it on the basis of what you found out about them on the internet, or what they’re saying on it.
Elizabeth
Yeah. Sathnam Sanghera thank you so much for speaking to me on The Sacred.
Sathnam
Thank you.
Elizabeth
Well, there was so much in there. I was writing something somewhere else recently. And I wrote, ‘I’m done with cool’. Nope, that’s not true: I want to be done with cool. I want to stop getting my head turned by that nonsense, and instead pursue wisdom. And so, it was like a little lovely little reminder to me in those opening few minutes when Sathnam says he doesn’t believe in cool. He just doesn’t care really, really doesn’t. He was prepared to be the guy in his school, who listened to pop music when all his friends were listened to indie music. I just loved it. I really enjoyed how he spoke about his mother. I’d love to meet her. This sense of a Trojan really, a woman who has struggled against such hardship. We didn’t really talk about the fact that there’s really serious mental health issues in Sathnam’s family, poverty, real challenges that she’s gone through, and the fact that he sees the influence that she has had on him, of helping him be himself and not be swayed by what’s cool, or by peer pressure was really beautiful. Whenever I speak to someone with a really large public voice, who receives a lot of abuse and trolling and death threats… I was gonna say I should be used to it. But, no, I don’t want to be used to it. I don’t want it to be normal, that people trying to speak in public and let’s be honest, this could be any of us now, right? The potential for a public platform is there for many of us if we, you know, pursue it hard enough. And actually, for some people its thrust upon them. And the fact that it is now normal for people to receive slews of death threats and abuse just is really not okay, and I don’t know why we’ve accepted it as normal, and I wish we hadn’t. I really liked how Sathnam spoke about his Sikhism and a sense of reclaiming it. It was a real privilege to see his bangle was – it was beautiful, and that line about recognised humanity as the same or as one. I can’t remember exactly what it was. ‘One’ feels more apt than ‘the same’. But yeah, there was a tenderness and a dignity about his faith. And it was lovely to sort of get a little snapshot of someone on a journey of reclaiming that language and of being more prepared to talk about it in public. It cracked me up as you heard about brown people being allowed to be religious… I really feel that! I had a lovely brief back and forth with Lizzy Damilola Blackburn. I hope I’ve got her name right. Who wrote a great book called ‘Yinka, Where is your husband?, which is a really funny sort of rom–com novel set in Peckham, near where I live, and the protagonist is a Christian and it’s just very normal and it’s very mainstream but being read all over the place and I do think it helps sometimes the way we code faith, we’re slightly less scared of it if someone has brown skin and it made me laugh. I think there was an astuteness about how Sathnam spoke about self–loathing in writing personally, that he’s still so formed by a type of journalism, and I see this in academia as well which says, you know, delete the self, remove the self from everything; real intelligence is de–personalised, de–humanised. And he and many others in many fields are realising that one that’s impossible to do and it’s a lie in some ways, and two, it doesn’t really connect with people, it doesn’t communicate very well that we’re interested in people. And we are much more able to take in facts and information most of us, if we have a sense of where the speaker is coming from, and the story that they are telling, and what lenses they see the world through, obviously, it can go too far. And we can make everything personal and emotion laden. And it was interesting also to hear Sathnam talk about, let’s look at colonialism, without shame and without pride. Let’s try and not have so many feelings about colonialism, but instead, look at the facts. It’s not that I don’t believe in facts, I do believe in facts, but I think the reason ‘Empireland’ works so well is he manages to thread that needle of saying I am a Sikh, I have a background and a position that changes how I see the story of the British Empire and I am trying to be transparent about that and hold on to rigour with how I look at this history. As many things end up being the wise course seems to being a both/and rather than an either/or. I think that’s all I have to reflect on, on this listen through. It feels like one of those I might listen to again, because we covered a lot of ground. But as always, it’s just a joy to have someone, as someone put in a review on Apple podcast recently, actually, to have a public persona who starts in monochrome come into full colour. And that’s a beautiful thing and privilege and I hope you enjoyed it.
Interested in this? Share it on social media. Join our monthly e–newsletter to keep up to date with our latest research and events. And check out our Supporter Programme to find out how you can help our work.
